


On Tongues and Daggers

by Plenoptic



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Aftercare, Bloodplay, Consensual Kink, Consensual Sex, Knifeplay, M/M, Riddles, Rough Sex, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:19:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22260178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plenoptic/pseuds/Plenoptic
Summary: "Why so fearful? You told me you would know the master of thieves. And now you will."
Relationships: Niccolò Machiavelli/La Volpe
Comments: 5
Kudos: 34





	On Tongues and Daggers

**Author's Note:**

> It's a wild one lads

“Undress.”

His hands twitched, but Machiavelli didn’t move. He had never heard la Volpe’s tone so low—so _dangerous_. He didn’t so much speak as _breathe_ the word into the space between them, and Machiavelli felt his hair stand on end.

Machiavelli was in danger—he knew that much. And while he’d placed himself in danger intentionally, that didn’t make it any less real or less frightening. This is what happens, he thought a little wildly, to men who poke at foxholes.

Volpe stepped forward, and Machiavelli flinched, very much against his will. The thief paused, cocked his head, grinned in the dark.

“Afraid?”

“No.”

Volpe hummed. Machiavelli heard the slow _snick_ of steel against leather as the thief unsheathed his dagger. “I said, _undress._ ”

When confronted with a wild animal in the countryside that sprawled around Florence’s walls, it was best practice to move very slowly and deliberately, without breaking eye contact. Machiavelli employed this principle now. He’d only seen this precaution fail against a rabid dog, and while this fox was many things, he was not rabid. He was entirely, terrifyingly, possessed of his reason. Machiavelli lifted his hands to his coat and undid his belt and fastenings. He shrugged it from his shoulders and let it fall to the floor.

Volpe pointed with the tip of the dagger. It glinted in the candlelight. “The bracer.”

Machiavelli frowned, but he supposed it was ridiculous to have hoped that Volpe would forget. He untied the bracer that carried his hidden blade and shucked it from his arm. The thief took a step forward, hand extended, and Machiavelli—glowering—placed the bracer in his palm. Volpe tossed it into the furthest corner of the room, where it clattered faintly against the floor. Machiavelli struggled a little to steady his breathing.

Volpe’s smile was arguably sharper than his blade, which he leveled at Machiavelli’s lower leg. “And the knife in your boot, if you please.”

God damn it. Machiavelli stepped out of his boots and bent slowly to retrieve the knife he kept hidden in the left. This, too, Volpe accepted and tossed aside. Machiavelli watched him, studying the thief’s movements, and Volpe’s eyes never left him.

“You are still dressed,” Volpe said, his voice as light and pleasant as if they were merely discussing the weather, or a mildly interesting bit of gossip. “I thought I made myself clear.”

Disarmed now, Machiavelli felt his pulse racing in his throat. Swallowing, he untied his doublet and shirt and pulled off both. The window was open, admitting a chilly night breeze, and he shivered a little in only his trousers.

Volpe raised an eyebrow. Machiavelli eyed the dagger for a moment, speculating about its sharpness—and then, resigned, he unfasted the laces of his trousers and shook them free.

“There. Happy?” he bit out.

“I am approaching pleased," Volpe said, with the lofty disinterest of a man who had intentionally selected a rather unamusing way to pass his time. His very tone stirred Machiavelli's ire, made his heart quicken with anger; his pride flinched from those words like a wounded animal from a killing blow. Volpe stepped closer, the dagger in his hand still held aloft. His eyes raked up and down Machiavelli’s nudeness, appraising.

When he could no longer stand the thief’s contemplative silence, Machiavelli snorted. “Well? Do I pass muster?”

Volpe’s eyes flicked back to his face. The smile on his mouth was a little cruel—and a lot something else that Machiavelli couldn’t identify. “What did you expect—that I would deem you beautiful? Don’t you know where you are?” He took another step forward, and then another, and Machiavelli stiffened. Volpe’s eyebrow flicked upward. “Why so fearful? You told me you would know the master of thieves. And now you will.”

“That almost sounds like a threat.”

“I have no need of threats for those who come to me willingly.” Volpe stopped his slow approach; they were but two paces apart. The thief extended his hand, holding out the blade, and the very tip touched the hollow of Machiavelli’s throat. He didn’t dare swallow, didn’t dare _breathe_ , even when the tip travelled lower and came to rest in the center of his sternum, just above the little brass key that hung on a thing chain around his neck. “What’s this?”

“A gift,” Machiavelli said, trying to breathe without moving his chest, drawing breath down toward his stomach as if he were running. It cleared his head a little, made the fear pulsing in his veins settle.

“And it opens…?”

“A lock.”

Volpe moved—it was so _quick_ , so fluid, and Machiavelli didn’t even have time to suck in a startled breath before Volpe was a mere handspan from his own face and the dagger’s tip was pressed up under his chin, forcing his head back.

“You think yourself so clever, boy.” Volpe’s purr was dark, sensual, so dulcet that Machiavelli felt it on his skin like fingernails trailing up his spine. “But antagonizing those who hold power over you is the height of foolishness.”

“And who here holds power over me?” Machiavelli challenged, trying not to let the fact that he could barely move his jaw take any of the venom from his words.

Volpe didn’t reward him with an answer. Instead, he trailed the tip of the blade downward, only just. “Tell me, clever one—what do tongues and blades have in common?”

Machiavelli swallowed. He felt the dagger’s tip bob beneath the movement of his Adam’s apple. “Both can be sharpened.”

“Very good. And the difference?” When Machiavelli didn’t respond, Volpe’s mouth stretched into a grin. “The difference is that only a blade can draw blood.”

“Evidently,” Machiavelli said, before he could stop himself, “you don’t know my tongue.”

La Volpe’s eyes widened, just a fraction—and so did his smile. He looked manic, frightening—beautiful. Machiavelli could scarcely hear the words that followed over the blood pulsing behind his ears. “And what an oversight. On your knees.”

His mother had always warned him that his mouth was going to get him in trouble one day, but Machiavelli was sure this wasn’t what she had in mind. He went to his knees. At some point tonight, an opportunity would arise to get the thief off his guard, but it wasn’t now. If he had to suffer a little indignity in the meanwhile, so be it.

The tip of Volpe’s dagger traced the shell of Machiavelli’s ear, downward, and then the cool edge came to rest against the line of his jaw. The slightest pressure forced Machiavelli to tilt his head back to keep himself from being cut.

“Open your mouth.”

Glaring, Machiavelli did. Volpe grasped him by the chin and lifted his face further, ran a thumb across Machiavelli’s lower lip before dipping it inward to caress his tongue. It was the first time they had touched, and Machiavelli shuddered at the ripple of sensation he felt across every inch of his body. Volpe’s skin tasted acrid, like leather and smoke, but Machiavelli didn’t let himself flinch. He also didn’t drop Volpe’s gaze as the thief withdrew his hand. The dagger stayed at his jaw.

“Surely you know what to do,” Volpe said, and for the first time, his voice betrayed something like arousal. Machiavelli lifted a hand, and when the thief made no move to stop him, began to undo the laces of la Volpe’s hose. He was a little surprised by the half-hard cock that rose to greet him—not by its size, which he deemed just a bit above average, but by the fact that it was circumcised. He chanced a glance upward at the thief.

“You’re cut?”

Volpe’s expression remained impassive. “I was born a Jew. You’re cut yourself.”

“Christ was circumcised. My mother is devout. You’re a Jew no longer?”

“Once a Jew, always a Jew,” Volpe said, in a parroted tone that suggested the words were not originally his. His hand fisted in Machiavelli’s hair and tugged. “But you forget yourself.”

Machiavelli made to lift a hand to Volpe’s cock, froze when the dagger at his jaw pressed in, just so. He lowered his hand, slowly, and let himself be tugged face-first into the thief’s crotch. He tried to brace his hands on Volpe’s thighs and was warned again by the dagger’s edge.

“In your lap.” When Machiavelli didn’t move, Volpe forced his chin up with a tilt of his blade. “Do I have to force you?”

Machiavelli weighed his words before answering. “Do you not force me already?”

Volpe considered him for a moment—and then, to Machiavelli’s great surprise, he withdrew the blade, placing it instead upon the table to his right. “If you do not want this,” the thief said, his voice soft, “only say so.”

Machiavelli hesitated—if a way out of this situation existed, this was surely it—and then leaned forward, hands in his lap, to run his mouth along the length of Volpe’s cock. The thief inhaled, a slow, almost rattling thing, and wound his hand back into the younger man’s hair.

“Take up your blade, fox,” Machiavelli murmured, glancing up at him. “I’ve been described as many things, but never as obedient.”

Volpe stared at him a moment longer as if mystified, as if Machiavelli were some curious creature he’d never seen before, nor even knew existed—and then he gripped the hilt of his dagger, pulling it from the table. He let it hang at his side, though, and exhaled softly as Machiavelli’s mouth opened around his cock, as a tongue lashed across the head. Volpe’s hand in his hair, for a moment, was almost caressing—and then he pulled, hard, and Machiavelli nearly choked. He tried to draw back, catch his breath, but Volpe pulled him in closer, and with a roll of his hips slipped his cock into the younger man’s throat.

Machiavelli closed his eyes, before Volpe could see the tears that sprang up in them from the sudden intrusion, the roughness of it, and moaned. It was a sound that drifted out of him unbidden, unplanned, a fragile, warbling thing, and it surprised him as much as it seemed to surprise Volpe, who went glacier-still for a moment before he rolled his hips again and claimed Machiavelli’s throat a little more firmly.

“I was, perhaps, ungenerous earlier,” he said, his voice low and hoarse. “You nearly approach desirable like this.”

The cool edge of his blade traced Machiavelli’s throat. He didn’t dare move of his own volition, let Volpe guide him with that firm hand in his hair. The thief’s cock, which had looked mostly unthreatening half-soft, was blood-hot and heavy against his tongue. He could scarcely breathe around its girth, and felt light-headed in moments; it was a relief when Volpe suddenly withdrew from his mouth and yanked his head back, whereupon he could at least gasp for air. He blinked his eyes open, wheezing a little, found the thief staring down at him with an expression Machiavelli simply could not parse. That, Machiavelli realized, was what most frightened him about the man they called la Volpe—not his wicked blades or impossible speed, but the effortless way he hid his thoughts behind a mask of carefully curated impartiality.

Panting, Machiavelli extended his tongue, made a soft noise humiliatingly close to a whine when Volpe let the head of his cock rest upon it. It was an invitation, and for a moment, Volpe seemed to consider it, stroking his own length and rubbing the swollen head of his cock along Machiavelli’s bottom lip. And then he stepped back, letting his erection spring up unencumbered between his thighs, and gestured toward the bed.

Machiavelli didn’t move. His eyes darted to the dagger hanging at Volpe’s side. The thief’s eyes narrowed, and he raised the blade, just so. Slowly, without breaking eye contact, Machiavelli got to his feet, took a few steps back until his calves hit the bed’s frame.

“Is this a game to you?” Volpe asked. His voice was deadly soft, like a spear tip dressed in velvet.

Machiavelli nodded.

“I have killed bed partners. I have killed them in the gray light of the morning, and I have killed them before the candles have burned low.”

“Are you telling me,” Machiavelli said, lowering himself to sit upon the bed, “that I have not wagered enough?”

“I am telling you that your offering does not guarantee your safety.” With the knife, he indicated the junction of Machiavelli’s thighs. “Touch yourself.”

Machiavelli did, taking himself in hand with a slow, caressing touch. He didn’t recall becoming hard, and Volpe hadn’t called attention to it, but now he could feel his pulse in his own cock. He sat back on his unoccupied hand, leveling a slow exhale, felt his cheeks grow hot under the thief’s unwavering gaze.

“Do you kill your bed partners as a matter of course, or because they offend in some way?”

Volpe’s eyes didn’t leave the sight of Machiavelli’s cock slipping in and out of the loose grasp of his fist. “I have never killed without good cause.”

“And what, may I ask, constitutes good cause?”

“Nothing you have done—or, I suspect, will do.”

Machiavelli quirked a smile. “Perhaps you should keep your suspicions better armed.”

The knife made a silvered flash in the candlelight as it whipped up to his chin, lifting his head, and Machiavelli’s smile widened. His cock pulsed, a deep clenching of muscles he felt ripple through his entire lower body, and he emitted a soft groan.

“Stop,” Volpe ordered. He withdrew the knife, but left it threateningly in view. “On your front.”

Machiavelli did not _scramble_ to obey, per se, but he did abscond entirely with his plans to move slowly and deliberately. He turned over and let his body rest against the coverlet on the bed, which was surprisingly comfortable—pilfered somehow, no doubt, though he couldn’t fathom how. He liked the sensation of the coverlet’s velvet on his skin.

The dagger’s tip played at his hairline, then trailed down the back of his neck, along his spine. Machiavelli’s skin was alight with sensation, every muscle coiling tight as the dagger made its leisurely downward approach.

“Lift your ass.”

Machiavelli swallowed, hesitated. When the dagger pressed against his skin, a little more dangerous than before, he shuffled his knees up to his chest. Volpe’s hand gripped his leg and forced his knees wider apart, and Machiavelli’s pulse began to gallop. The dagger trailed down the cleft of his ass, circled his hole, and tapped against his perineum. Machiavelli trembled, his breath catching high and tight in his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, simultaneously more aroused and more frightened than he’d ever been in his life. He felt his cock dripping between his thighs.

“Stay quiet,” Volpe said. He gave no further details.

And then he felt it—a sudden bloom of pain, so sharp and so intense that he couldn’t even identify where he’d been cut, only that it was somewhere between his legs. He bit down a cry before it could spill from his mouth; his thighs tightened, trembled, but he didn’t make a sound. The pain didn’t last, resolved to a bothersome stinging. And then it happened again, and he could place it more definitively—Volpe made a hair-fine, inch-long cut on the back of his left thigh, just beneath his ass. Machiavelli inhaled sharply and held his breath.

“Good,” Volpe said, and for the first time all night, his voice approached something like appraising. Warm, rough fingertips traced Machiavelli’s spine, feather-light, and he found himself arching toward the touch, so intensely welcome after the cold bite of the blade—

Which was on his other leg now, making a narrow incision to mirror his other thigh, and Machiavelli dragged the nearest pillow close and muffled his yelp into it. He shouldn’t have—Volpe’s palm came down on his ass so hard and so suddenly that Machiavelli jolted, a cry tumbling from his mouth, and Volpe hit him again, harder. Machiavelli nearly bit his tongue with the effort of not crying out again.

“You understand the game now, I take it,” Volpe said, his tones low. Machiavelli nodded into the pillow. “They’re shallow, by the way. Nothing more than a bead of blood. Now, my first mark is three and three.”

Machiavelli’s brow furrowed, but he understood soon enough—with a surgeon’s precision, Volpe had cut him twice more on each thigh, just below the first wounds. Machiavelli shook but held his tongue.

“Marvelous,” Volpe crooned, and then his tongue was a warm pressure against Machiavelli’s perineum, licking a wet stripe from his balls to his hole, lingering there. It stung—Machiavelli realized, with a little flicker of ire, that Volpe had first cut him in the most vulnerable place possible.

“You—” He began, tone accusing, and then snarled when Volpe’s open palm stuck his ass while simultaneously the thief’s tongue plunged inside him. Volpe hit him again—punishment—and Machiavelli withheld an answering growl, tightening his jaw. His hands curled into fists against the coverlet. Helpless against the sudden assault of Volpe’s mouth, he focused on steadying his breathing. Volpe had reached between his legs, let the tip of his dagger rest below Machiavelli’s navel.

“I’m giving you two more,” Volpe murmured. The blade travelled south, just kissing Machiavelli’s skin, raising the hair on his arms. “Deeper. If you can’t take it, say so now.”

Machiavelli said nothing—in fact he held his breath, and shuffled his knees open a touch wider. When Volpe cut him, it hurt—two quick, vertical lacerations up the back of his thighs. Machiavelli flinched and bit into the pillow. Volpe touched his lower back, ran caressing fingertips between his legs, down the new wounds. Machiavelli heard the slickness of his own blood beneath the thief’s hands, felt its heat dripping along his skin.

When Volpe pressed two fingers into him, for one terrifying moment Machiavelli thought his own blood served as the lubricant—but then he heard a distinctive clatter as the thief tossed aside a bottle of oil, let it fall to the floor. It was a cautious penetration, probing, careful—not at all what Machiavelli was expecting. He let himself whimper, flinched under the hard strike that earned him, but at least he knew the rules were still in place.

“You’re tight. Are you not taken like this often?” When Machiavelli didn’t reply, Volpe released a low, lilting chuckle. “You may answer.”

“No,” Machiavelli replied, and tensed—but Volpe didn’t strike him. He forced himself to relax, even to arch his lower back and permit Volpe to press his fingers deeper, and the thief hummed his approval. Were his head not so clouded by that potent mix of sharp pain and aching pleasure, Machiavelli might have taken a moment to be impressed that the thief had managed to make him afraid to speak—not a feat any man had accomplished before him.

“Mm. Good. Quiet again.”

“I rather like remaining in possession of my own tongue,” Machiavelli retorted, and Volpe hit him, three times in quick succession, and a fourth when Machiavelli failed to mask his gasp into the pillow.

“Then by all means, speak, but you know the consequences.”

“I do,” Machiavelli panted, jolted hard under the ringing slap Volpe landed against the stinging wounds on his left thigh.

“And yet you persist. Be careful, Machiavelli—you’ll leave me with the impression that you like it.”

He _did_ like it—God help him. But he didn’t reply, focusing instead on the sensation of Volpe’s fingers inside him, massaging him open. He could scarcely remember the last time he’d been taken like this—it was a foggy memory, distant, wine-drowned. He knew it had been clumsy, drunken—nothing at all like the masterful manipulation he fell prey to now.

Abruptly, Volpe seized him by the hair, drew him up onto his knees. Machiavelli didn’t fight it, or couldn’t—he wasn’t sure which. Both, perhaps. Volpe held him upright with the edge of the dagger against his throat and pressed a third finger into him, and Machiavelli struggled not to cry out, hands scrambling for purchase—they found Volpe’s hips behind him, gripped, released quickly when he felt the fingers inside him curl and threaten his inner walls with fingernails.

“Does it hurt?” Volpe bit his shoulder, hard, bruising, and Machiavelli grunted. “Answer me.”

“Y-Yes.”

“Does it feel good?”

“Yes.”

“I can give you more, but I pleasure and I hurt in equal measure. Is that what you want?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Machiavelli said, almost in a sob, and Volpe pushed him back down against the mattress, pressed his face into the pillow with a firm fist tangled in his hair.

And then the thief breached him without further preamble, forced the heavy length of his cock past Machiavelli’s entrance. Machiavelli’s shout was muffled into the pillow. His hands floundered, and Volpe seized one wrist and pinned it high against the younger man’s back, forcing his spine into a sharp bow that had the added affect of letting him sink his cock in deeper.

“Fuck,” Machiavelli gasped out, and Volpe shoved his head down hard before releasing his hair to land a bruising slap across his ass instead. “Fuck, yes—”

Volpe gave him no more time to adjust before setting a pace, hard, fast, his hips drumming bruises into his bedmate’s reddened, bloodied ass. With the one hand left to him, Machiavelli bit his knuckles to keep from crying out. The only solace was that Volpe had at least slicked him well, and the thief’s length pushed in and out of him with ease, with soft, filthy sounds that made Machiavelli shudder to hear them.

“Beautiful,” Volpe breathed, his voice so hoarse, so affected, that Machiavelli couldn’t stop the moan that bubbled in his throat, couldn’t help but to rock his ass back into a deep thrust that made him see white.

Suddenly the thief slowed—the next several thrusts were almost gentle, and deep, pressing Machiavelli open until he had to cry out just to cope with the intensity of it all. Tears sprang to his eyes and he rubbed his face furiously into the pillow. If Volpe noticed, he didn’t comment—nor did he hit the younger man for his exclamation. In a moment, the tone and tenor of their fucking had changed entirely.

Volpe withdrew, and Machiavelli groaned at the sudden emptiness. He didn’t have to wait long. Volpe turned him—manhandled him, really—onto his back, held the knife to his throat while he wrenched the assassin’s thighs open and reseated himself with a hard thrust.

“I want you to watch,” he said, his voice growling, deep—Machiavelli was reminded vividly of the time he’d been wading in the sea near Naples as a boy, and found a spot where the shelf of sand abruptly dropped off into the all-consuming dark, how his father had only just managed to snatch him back when he began to scream and flounder. The dagger withdrew.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, trembling, looked down at himself, at the sight of Volpe splitting him open while his own cock, hard and aching, bounced against his stomach with each rough thrust. He wondered, suddenly, wildly, whether it was really him in this bed—whether the tangled sum of his life’s choices had really led him to this moment in time. Everything hurt—his ass, insides, weeping cock, the bloodied backs of his thighs and between his legs. He was going to cry, or come, or both.

“Cut me,” spilled from his mouth, and Volpe did—nocked three nestled V’s into the soft skin beneath Machiavelli’s navel, and then three more in his abdomen so that the weeping head of his cock dribbled pre-cum across the stinging wounds. More thrilling than the pain, than the impossible elation of Volpe’s length inside him, was watching Volpe do as he asked.

“Kiss me,” Machiavelli said, in little more than a whisper, his voice trembling.

Volpe stared down at him, expression thunderous, and then hit him—a hard slap across his cheek, snapping his head to the side, and then that strong hand gripped his chin and forced his face up, and Volpe kissed him, all tongue and teeth, and Machiavelli moaned into his mouth and tangled his hands into the thief’s dark hair, pulling him closer. Volpe seized his wrists and twisted hard, pinned him to the bed, and the kisses didn’t relent, slick and bruising against his pliant mouth.

Machiavelli’s orgasm crept up on him—it had been coiled low and tight in the small of his back and now it erupted, drawing his back bow-string tight, leaving him crying out in helpless, pleasured agony as the thief grasped his legs and thrust himself back into the assassin’s clenching entrance. It hurt for real, being taken on the cusp of his own climax, a burning, searing sort of hurt, and Machiavelli begged—for it to stop, for it to never end—in a pleading tumble of words that Volpe swallowed between kisses.

Something like an eternity—in reality, probably not more than twenty seconds more—passed before Volpe grunted and his hips plunged forward and held steady. Machiavelli felt the cock buried in his body pulse twice, thrice, four times, _Jesus_ , and then Volpe withdrew with a hard snap of his hips that left the assassin gasping—in pain, with relief, with disappointment, he didn’t know.

“To your knees.”

Machiavelli craned his head, squinted at the thief—the candles had gone out at some point—making his confusion apparent. Volpe’s eyes narrowed.

“Turn over. Show me.”

A moment passed, and then Machiavelli understood. Slowly, wincing, he rolled onto his front and shuffled his knees forward, presented his ass again, whined when Volpe spread him open roughly. He felt la Volpe’s spend begin to drip from his entrance and shuddered, humiliation heating his cheeks. He hid his face in the pillow.

Volpe spent what seemed a long time appraising the damage he’d wrought. At length, his weight left the bed, and Machiavelli breathed his relief—he’d been convinced, for a heart-stopping moment, that the master thief might try to fuck him again, and he was positive he couldn’t take another moment of Volpe’s attentions. The sensation from his wounds had tumbled off the knife-fine edge between pain and pleasure, and now he only hurt. He tried to hide his squirming discomfort, with little success, he suspected, while he listened to Volpe prowl around the room.

Volpe rejoined him on the bed, and Machiavelli started when a warm, wet cloth passed between his legs.

“Easy,” Volpe said, and his voice was soft, soothing even. Machiavelli’s first instinct was to raise his guard, but the salve the thief began to rub into his injuries chased the tension from his muscles, left him groaning quietly into the pillow as Volpe massaged his aching ass. “It seems I’ve fucked all the pretty words right out of you. Tell me what I can do to encourage their return.”

“Water,” Machiavelli mumbled. When Volpe did not strike him, he continued, “Wine, if you have it.”

Volpe chuckled. “If I have it,” he mocked, though not unkindly, and left the bed once more. When he returned, he rolled Machiavelli over, hushing his soft protests, and pulled him upright. The wine was blood-red; Machiavelli stared into its depths for a moment before Volpe’s gentle tug at his hair prompted him to drink.

He was draining the glass when Volpe’s fingertips traced his cheek, and he flinched away from the touch. Volpe hummed a soft note.

“I struck you too hard. I apologize.”

“No. I just…didn’t expect it. My face, I mean.”

“Next time, I’ll be clearer about what you can expect. Lust made me foolhardy.”

Machiavelli raised his eyebrows. “Next time?”

Volpe’s grin was sharper, somehow, than the blade that had left its marks in Machiavelli’s skin. “Very few survive a second night. You’d be the first to survive a third.”

“Can you only fuck with a blade in the bed with you?”

“No.”

“And under what conditions might you deem it unnecessary?”

Volpe didn’t respond. For the first time, Machiavelli realized that the thief hadn’t undressed the whole time they’d been together, had only released his cock from his hose. Volpe drew his hood back up over his dark curls and made to stand, and Machiavelli lunged after him, grasping his wrist.

“If I ask you to kiss me again, will you strike me?”

Volpe looked back at him. “No. But neither will I acquiesce.”

“Why not?”

“Perhaps I fear poisoning.”

“You think I hide cantarella beneath my tongue?”

“I think you were correct,” Volpe said, and caressed his face again, “when you professed the sharpness of that tongue. I shall be better guarded in the future.”

Machiavelli scowled and flopped back against the mattress. “The ‘death’ of your bed mates is only metaphorical, isn’t it.”

“I’m afraid so. I am no real killer.” Volpe smiled down at him. “Though, for you, I could be.” He extended a hand, and when Machiavelli made no move to stop him, almost delicately lifted the little brass key resting against the assassin’s chest. “Tell me—what _does_ this open?”

“I haven’t the faintest clue.”

“The person who gifted it to you didn’t tell you?”

“The gifter was Florence herself.” Volpe frowned at him in confusion, and Machiavelli grinned. “I found it on my walk here.”

“…And wore it because…?”

“I guessed—correctly, it would seem—that you might enjoy a little mystery.”

Volpe stared at him, his expression unreadable. His eyes narrowed and the line of his mouth tightened—Machiavelli couldn’t decide whether he seemed pleased, irritated, flattered, or some combination of the three. He decided it didn’t much matter.

The assassin sighed and indicated his stomach, filthy with pinkish smears of blood and semen. “I have wounds unattended, fox. If you won’t threaten me further, pray make yourself useful.”

Volpe snorted. “And now I miss the stillness of your tongue.”

“Well, you know how to silence me.”

The thief smiled—a slow, wicked thing that made him look, in Machiavelli’s opinion, handsome beyond all reason—and when he reached for the waylaid cloth and salve, he made a show, too, of retrieving his dagger.

**Author's Note:**

> Contemplated making Volpe a kinky violent freak right up until the end, but I'd have felt weird about it. I'm replaying AC:B and keep thinking that he comes across as much more dangerous and mysterious than I often give him credit for when I'm writing Volpelli.


End file.
